Aquino's Walk-Off Homer Lifts Dragons to 6-4 Win

Dragons 6, Burlington 4 (10 innings)

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Dayton, Ohio-Aristides Aquino belted a 10th inning two-run "walk-off" home run to lift the Dayton Dragons to a 6-4 victory over the Burlington Bees on Saturday night. The win was the Dragons 12th walk-off victory at Fifth Third Field this season and their first walk-off home run since July of 2013. A crowd of 8,556 was in attendance.

Aquino came to the plate with no outs in the bottom of the 10th after Avain Rachal had started the rally with a base hit to right field. On the first pitch, Aquino hit a towering drive to deep left field. Burlington's Trevor Gretzky drifted back to the fence, stopped, and leaped as high as possible. The ball cleared Gretzky's glove by a couple of inches and hit the edge of the top of the wall, above the yellow line, and bounced high into the air toward the field. Umpires immediately signaled home run and the Dragons celebrated their third straight win.

The Dragons took a 4-1 lead to the ninth inning before Burlington battled back to score three times and push the game toward extra innings. A costly error in the inning led to two unearned runs and Burlington's Jake Yacinich delivered a two-out, game-tying RBI single off a 3-2 pitch from Dragons reliever Jeremy Kivel.

Dragons starting pitcher Tejay Antone was outstanding.   He worked seven innings, allowing seven hits and one run with one walk and four strikeouts. It was the 11th time in 22 starts that Antone has allowed one run or less, but the Burlington rally in the ninth forced Antone to settle for no decision.

The Dragons scored two runs in the third inning to take an early lead. Shed Long doubled to center field with one out and scored on a single by Luis Gonzalez, who advanced to second on the throw home. Gonzalez took third on a wild pitch and scored on Gavin LaValley's sacrifice fly to make it 2-0.

Burlington scored in the fourth on back-to-back doubles by Tim Arakawa and Wade Wass to make it 2-1. The Dragons scored twice in the bottom of the eighth, getting a run-scoring single by Argenis Aldazoro and another run on an error.

The Dragons finished with 14 hits. Aquino was 3 for 5 after going 5 for his previous 39. Long, Gonzalez, Rachal, Aldazoro, and Narciso Crook each had two hits. 

Conor Krauss (3-2) pitched a perfect top of the 10th inning to earn the victory.

The Dragons (22-26 in the second half; 61-57 overall) close out the six-game home stand on Sunday afternoon at 2:00 against Burlington (16-32, 51-66) at Fifth Third Field. Jake Paulson (5-4, 2.83) will start for Dayton against Burlington's Justin Anderson (7-8, 3.21). 

All Dragons games are broadcast on radio on Fox Sports 980 WONE and on the internet at wone.com. Games are also available on the Dayton Dragons mobile app.

Notes: Aquino's homer was the first walk-off home run for the Dragons since Jesse Winker homered to beat Wisconsin on July 21, 2013.